User:Alethe/Ligia Montoya

Ligia Montoya (? -18 April 1967): Argentine paper-folding artist, who played an important role in all aspects of the founding of the international origami movement from the 1950s, out of which the New York Origami Center (1958: now Origami USA) and modern origami developed.

Ligia Montoya was born in the province of Córdoba in the Republic of Argentina, where she lived most of her life. She is reported to have discovered 'origami' of a Spanish tradition around 1909, via articles by the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno in the Argentine magazine "Caras y Caretas" published in 1902. Señorita Montoya learned more about the subject from Spanish emigrė Dr Vicente Solórzano Sagredo, who had studied at the University of Salamanca while Unamuno was its rector. In Córdoba, Dr Solórzano was then writing a series of origami books, for which Montoya (though unacknowledged) did the careful drawings, before an international standard notation was developed. She then joined extended communication with American expatriate in France Gershon Legman, with whom she worked cooperatively on technical and artistic aspects of paperfolding. Largely through Legman's connections, in time she communicated with the founder of the Origami Center, Lillian Oppenheimer, as well as with Samuel Randlett, Robert Harbin, Akira Yoshizawa. Señorita Montoya's own designs are, in subject-matter, drawn from observation of nature: notably birds, flowers, insects typical of Argentina. Her models are exact, fine and lively, expressing the shapes and creases of her thin white paper in the living forms it represents. Her origami Nativity crêche scene is an outstanding example. Señorita Montoya was long the only Spanish-speaking (honorary) member of the Origami Center. Robert Harbin's section on Montoya in his Secrets of Origami (ISBN 978-0486297071: Dover 3d edn, 1997), pp. 106-142, is a main source for her designs.

Additional research is required to establish biographical (including birth) dates for her, to distinguish Ligia Montoya's designs from those of her early mentor, Dr Solórzano, to understand her origami aesthetic and her influence on the development of the art.